Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, is in Bratislava, Slovakia, and held a presser with his Slovakian counterpart, defense minister Jaroslav Nad.
Another journalist asked about the option of supplying S-300 systems to Ukraine, the Soviet-designed, long-range surface-to-air missile system.
Austin said: “What has been successful for the Ukrainian forces is that they’ve been able to really prevent Russia from establishing air supremacy and they have done through effective use of air defense systems, both medium-range and short-range systems.”
Ordinary observers are probably a bit surprised to hear him say that Russia has not established air supremacy when it’s bombarding Ukraine from the air in ruthless fashion. Zelenskiy also clearly thinks that there is, indeed, more in Nato’s power that it could do. And more weapons are under discussion, as we’ve written.
However, Austin continued: “So our goal has been to continue to reinforce those things that have worked for the Ukrainian forces. So we are talking to a number of our allies and partners to get as much capability as we can to continue to provide help.”
Austin is asked about the long-range missile systems Russia is using to attack Ukraine and what he is discussing with allies about alternatives to the S-300 system, in order to help Ukraine in “the long-range arena”.
Austin said: “The systems that are being used by the Russians…they are using a lot of rockets, missiles and artillery. There are a number of things that can be used to counter that. We see that drones have been very effective, we’ve also seen that having the ability to conduct counter-fire with rockets and artillery is also very effective so I think increasingly we’ll see the Ukrainian forces turn to those methods to counter that.”
“The rockets, or actually cruise missiles, that you mentioned are fired from aerial platforms, I think you know that those were fired actually from inside of Russia so a no-fly zone would not have prevented that activity.”
Nad said supplying S-300 systems is being discussed and there is a willingness as long as there’s backfill to ensure the security of Nato and the individual members’ territories by replacing the systems given to Ukraine.